Southwest Airlines to this days hadn’t had any accidents that would have resulted in passengers or crew members fatalities (they killed one six year old children when plane overshot runway in Chicago few years go in bad weather) and there haven’t been any casualties in the US on scheduled passenger services for nine years.

Southwest Airlines flight 1380 from New York to Dallas took off with 149 people on board (144 passengers and 5 crew members). Engine had a failure and shrapnel mashed a window. This all happened right after take off and the plane then diverted to Philadelphia.

Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that at about 11:15 a.m., the Southwest flight suffered an “apparent in-flight engine failure of the left engine.”

Sumwalt, who confirmed one fatality, said NTSB will ship the engine offsite and deconstruct it to determine what went wrong.

Sumwalt said the death marks the first passenger fatality on a U.S. carrier since 2009. The NTSB declined to speculate on the cause of death. It also marks the first passenger fatality for Southwest.

Conclusion

It is truly remarkable how rarely there are accidents that result in fatalities compared to just 1990’s, although the report that was published earlier this year (read more here) speculated that it was basically an anomaly that we hadn’t had any major incidents as of late.

It is unclear what happened to this passenger that is now deceased. There are reports that one was almost sucked out from the window that was mashed but people were able to pull the person back.